Ending insurgency, again

GOVERNMENT WINNING war versus NPA in Central Luzon.

So screamed a press release from the Philippine Information Agency-3 uploaded en toto in Punto! online Dec. 13, 2019, to wit:

Relentless focused military operations and continuous conduct of community support program by government instrumentalities in Central Luzon resulted in a series of encounters, recovery of various war materials and massive surrender of members and supporters of the New People’s Army…

Recovered firearms include eight M16, one M14, one Carbine, three Cal 45, two Magnum 22, one Cal 22 sub-machine gun, one Cal 38 and two homemade pistol, two Improvised Explosive Devices, one hand grenade and five detonating cords…

Also, for November, three members of NPA were killed during encounters, five were captured and number of surrenderees reached 600 regular members and supporters. Among the biggest include the 133 supporters under Malayang Aniban ng mga Magsasaka sa Manggang Marikit, Bagong Barrio at Yuson in Nueva Ecija…

In just a short period of time, we were able to accomplish more than what we expected or targeted. I am truly overwhelmed with the conquest of our operating troops on the ground conducting focused military operations who are very eager to pursue our mandate to End Local Communist Armed Conflict and we will engage, empower all sectors of society to be free and resistant to communist terrorist operations and infiltrations…

So was 703^rd Infantry Brigade commander Col. Andrew Costelo quoted in the press release.

Ending the communist insurgency – the “mass surrender of rebels and sympathizers” as highlighted proof – has truly become a recurrent refrain of the Philippine military especially in the days leading to Christmas.

The timing inspiring on the Right hand -- in keeping with the spirit of hope, the blessing of peace the season brings. Dispiriting on the Left – the NPA losing adherents yet again closing in on the founding anniversary of the Communist Party of the Philippines on Dec. 26. Its 51^st this year.

So, how many times have we heard of the government winning the war against the Reds hereabouts?

In March 2017, 7^th Infantry Division commander Major Gen. Angelito De Leon declared: “All of the provinces in Central Luzon are peaceful and ready for further development, a step before being declared insurgency-free.”

Earlier, in Jan. 2014, no less than AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Emmanuel T. Bautista declared Pampanga “peaceful, insurgency-free and ready for further development” in a memorandum of agreement he signed with Gov. Lilia G. Pineda at The Promenade, Kings Royale Hotel in the City of San Fernando.

In that same event, the AFP showed that of 11 Luzon provinces previously declared insurgency-free, three are from Central Luzon: Aurora, Nueva Ecija, and Tarlac. Which with Pampanga in 2014, and Bataan in the latest AFP statement, leaves but Zambales and Bulacan in the AFP’s red list as of the moment.

Two years hence, notwithstanding AFP’s the declaration of a large chunk of  Central Luzon as insurgency-free, the war versus the Reds goes on, albeit the AFP winning it, of course.

Indeed, when did the AFP ever come to losing the war against the NPA? From the yellowed archive of columns I wrote in the long-defunct Angeles Sun, timeliness sprang in this one (8-13 Dec. 1988 issue) – exactly 31 years to the day of the PIA-3 press release that opened this piece:

The fallacy of overkill

THE ARMED Forces of the Philippines may be winning the insurgency war but the bite, that walloping impact, of victory is dissipated with the amateurish handling of information dished out for public consumption.

This is indicative of an inept, if not inane and inutile, propaganda machinery. Or of the employment of propagandists steeped in the old Hitlerian institution of the Big Lie. Nowhere is this more evident than in Pampanga where the overkill syndrome has become the norm in martial propaganda.

Rebel surrenderees are a stock-in-trade in the hearts-and-minds battle in any insurgency campaign, be it in Vietnam, in Malaya, in Somoza’s Nicaragua, or here.

The packaging of information relative to the surrenderees could spell the chasm of a difference between earned propaganda value and loss of credibility. To the latter has fallen many a report of surrenders. Not for anything else but for the substance of incredulity or illogic.

For instance, there were this year successive reports of NPA “regulars” surrendering in droves in Pampanga – 50 in Lubao, 40 in Sta. Ana, 30 in San Simon, if memory serves right – over the “200 regulars” captured and “subjected to tactical interrogation for one week” by a ranking PC officer.

Against the backdrop of military pronouncement that there are less than 200 NPA regulars in Pampanga, the reports would show that the NPA in the province is operating on a deficit manpower or negative level!

Incredible too is the superhuman feat of tactical interrogation for one week of 200 NPA rebels by only one PC officer. With him alone, we wonder why there is still an insurgency war in Pampanga or in the whole country for that matter.

The slip in the surrender drama shows too in some field officers’ attempt at excellence directed toward an ultimate rise in the ranks.

During the Marcos misrule, an officer-friend was lionized in the local press for the number of “surrenderees” who took the oath of alliance to the Republic before him. The surrender rites being always on Sundays and in marketplaces sowed the seeds of disbelief that subsequently uncovered the sham of surrender and ultimately effected this officer’s relegation to the doghouse.

He was found to have been gathering all marketgoers on Sundays, telling them of a new Philippine Republic to which every Filipino should pledge his allegiance, and then passed off the pictures to newspapers as those of NPA surrenderees.

Overkill transcends the figurative and goes to the literal in certain casualty reports in internecine encounters between the NPA and the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (HMB).

The conclusion of 20 dead in a recent encounter between the two, without any body retrieved or accounted for is plainly fictitious. Especially when the speculated number of combatants did not go beyond two scores and the firefight lasting for a mere ten minutes (that would be two killed per minute).

The above data culled from a single military report evidenced the contradictory and illogical presentation of facts and fantasies that have become indistinguishable in many a military mind.

That the NPA has greatly lost its strength in the province, owing to military victory in Maj. Sonny Gutierrez’s and Maj. Roman Lacap’s fields of battle; in Col. Efren Q. Fernandez’s barangay dialogs; and in Lt. Col. Amado Espino Jr’s “capitalist cheerers,” is not simply believable but highly probable.

It has been a long time since the last sparrow killing and field encounter. A number of NPA sympathizers do indeed return to the fold of the law. A relative peace reigns in the province. No need therefore to tilt the balance more by coming up with these ridiculous and insulting propaganda schemes. Which makes an utter fallacy of the military’s actual victory.              

AND the war goes on.

The Governor's speech

…QNG HISTORIA ning Capampangan, adwa lang bage mamucud caba ning panaun milabas at caring daratang pa.

Muna, ing Capampangan atin yang bitbit a tetagan at cabayanihan. Cadwa, matas ya uri cabiyasnan at ing catutubu nang gelingan caring miyayaliwang sanga ning pamagaral antimo qng siyensiya, batas, sining, literatura, agricultura, cultura, at economiya mamucud qng queyang labwad a tibuan, at iti marangal nang ipagmaragul qng sablang panaun…

Ngening casalucuyan, paninap cu ing quecatamung mal a lalawigan mipalad ya sana qng tagimpan tamung sinese, manatili sumulung at magluid ing caunlaran ding memalen lalam ning democrasya, calayan, at pamisasanmetung.

Pagnasan ta ngan ing cayang masanting a cabilian; pagdalupan ta ngan ing dalise nang catahimican, at pisanmetung ta ngan ing sana iluwalas ta ya ing dalan a iquit tamu para tuntunan qng mayap at masanting a paintungulan.

Maniwala cung capilan man, e tamu asacwil ing itamu Capampangan tamu – taung ating tetagan, cabiyasnan, at matas a uring dangal – at uli niti, paniwalan cung ding memalen queti malyari lang misanmetung, mugit at munyat, sumaup qng capamalan lalam ning Bayung Capampangan…

Acu, icayu, tamu ngan manuknangan queti o caring aliwang lugal, Capampangan tamu ngan at iti gugulisac tamu at pagmaragul e mu queti Pilipinas nune qng mabilug a yatu.

Luid ya ing Capampangan!

SO HAILED Vice Gov. Lilia G. Pineda of the Capampangan in her message at the 2019 Most Outstanding Kapampangan Awards night on Wednesday read for her by board member Tonton Torres.

Listening to her words and hearing that Nanay was in the States juxtaposed to an event around this time too in December 2011 at a gathering of cabalens in California for their own celebration of Pampanga Day. I have long put in print thus:

 The Governor’s speech

 “NUNG NANU mang casaquitan,

lugud mu at pacamal ing capaquibatan
Capampangan cu, daya ampon caladua cu,
sese na cu ning Guinu, miyabe-yabe tamu…”
The stirring strains of the ditty wafted as though from the heavens, embracing every single soul with love of race, instilling in every heart pride of place, of pining for the native home, here amid the bounty of the adopted land that is America.
Not a few – not the least Gov. Lilia Pineda – at the jampacked Bateman Hall in Lynwood, California were moved to tears at such a touching rendition of Pampanga’s “spiritual” hymn – as differentiated from the official Imno ning Capampangan – by a choral ensemble of the United Pampanga Leaders Council.
It was the perfect setting for the governor’s speech – in Kapampangan, naturally – at the annual Thanksgiving Day party of the UPLC, centered as it was on pamisasanmetung (unity), pamicacalugud (love), and pamagmalasaquit (caring) – the very core values of the Kapampangan.
Calamities and disasters have so become integral in the life of the Capampangan that we have not only learned to live with them but even to excel, to rise above them, Governor Pineda told her audience of over 500 cabalens.
At the recent floods that submerged a large part of the province, she narrated, residents that sought refuge in the upper floors of their homes and their roofs routinely refused rescue offers, saying they were used, and therefore well-adapted, to these dire situations.
The flood victims did not even demand relief goods, finding satisfaction with whatever came their way, secured as they were with their own provisions.
So unlike in the other inundated places where fights broke out at the relief lines, where the victims damned their local governments for failing to come to their aid.
“Maybe this is what others called the cayabangan (braggadocio) Capampangans are widely known for. Most assuredly though, it is pride, to stand on one’s own, the can-do spirit of Capampangan and his resiliency no matter how arduous the circumstances he is in that makes the Capampangan equal to any adversity.” So said the governor.
And what greater adversity could there be than the Mount Pinatubo eruptions that threatened to erase Pampanga from the very face of the earth, she reminded her audience.
Here she paid as much tribute to the resiliency of the Capampangan “born of his sense of belonging and his pride of race” as to the then-Senator Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for saving Pampanga from obliteration, for saving the Capampangan from oblivion.
“When the national government proposed to let nature take its course, that is to allow Pampanga to be buried in lahar, GMA stood up to take the cudgel for our people, arguing that Pampanga is the heart of Central Luzon and would remain a fulcrum for the development of the region as well as Northern Luzon. In the end she convinced the government to save the province at all costs, even at the cost of P10 billion for its protection, as now clearly manifest in the megadike system and other rehabilitation works that spurred the nascent development of the province, as well as the whole Central Luzon region.”
The Macapagal-Arroyo presidency, the governor reminded her listeners, brought much to Pampanga in terms of development, citing the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway, the rehabilitated North Luzon Expressway and the rise in investments at the Clark Freeport and increased flights at the Clark airport, as concrete proofs.
“In these trying times for our beloved cabalen, the former President, let us pray the Lord for Him to provide her with the strength, the fortitude to face all the accusations against her.”
There are those who asked, she noted, why the Capampangans have not gone out in the streets to rally in support of GMA.
“We all respect the legal process. We remain faithful to our justice system. The greatest thing we can do to help her is to fervently pray for her, even as we keep our love for her in our hearts.” The governor’s words reminded us here of that truism of long ago: More things are wrought by prayer than this world ever dreamed of.
As one in prayer, so in love too must we all be for our beloved land, and in caring for our cabalens, the governor said, even as she paid tribute to the charity and goodwill of the Capampangans in America to those back home.
“Individually, the money you send to your relatives are a big help in meeting their daily needs, and collectively, even a bigger help in moving the local economy. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you.”
Capampangan cu, daya ampon caladua cu, sese na cu ning Guinu, miyabe-yabe tamu…” With the recurring refrain, the governor closed her speech with the call: “Tucnangan ta na ing pamanyira (let us stop all these intriguing that causes dissension among Capampangans). Let us embrace one another as brothers and sisters in that spirit of pamisasanmetung, pamicacalugud, pamagmalasaquit.
Yes, the governor knows just too well the fissures in the Capampangan community in LA. Which makes another story.
Anyways, the audience rose to its feet in a thundering ovation at the end of the governor’s speech.
Message clearly – and most sincerely – delivered there. Lessons, hopefully, well received.

The Capampangan

(First published in The Voice, December 6-12, 1998 issue, in observance of Pampanga Day, wonder if this piece still rings true 21 years after.) 

THERE IS much ado about the Capampangan.

More than a tribe, the old Capampangan prides himself as a separate race, distinct from the Filipino. Perhaps in bitter rebellion against the diminution of his once vast kingdom that was said to have stretched from the mouth of the Pasig in Tondo to the upper reaches of the Chico River in Cagayan Valley.

Mayhaps, in a vicious reaction to the consequent waning of the primacy of his amanung sisuwan which is now limited to just the province and the southern half of Tarlac, plus a single town in each of Pampanga’s contiguous provinces of Bataan, Bulacan and Nueva Ecija.

He may not be the distinct species that he likes to make of himself, but the Capampangan unarguably stands out when ranged against his Filipino fellows. The Capampangan is easily, if readily distinguished.

Food is his passion. A gourmet and a gourmand is the Capampangan as he turns snails and frogs, dogs and field mice, pythons and cobras, locusts and mole crickets into exotic dishes rivaling ambrosia itself. And no meal for him without the attendant condiments of patis, toyo, and aslam.

And who could ever love the pungent buro or balo-balo other than the Capampangan?

How the Capampangan loves to party! Just about every occasion is a cause for celebration. A Capampangan fiesta is unrivalled in the excesses of bacchanalia. The fattened calf or pig, the chicken, the duck,the goat, even good old Bantay, get served on the Capampangan table as asado, estofado, and menudo, galantina and caldereta, morcon, not to forget lechon. Beer goes by the barrel, ginebra by the bucket.

For dessert, leche flan won’t suffice. There has to be bibingqui, capit, tibuc-tibuc, pepalto, bagcat saguin, macapunu, and all sorts of fruits.

No money is no excuse to feast. E ca macapagtawó? Ala cang marine tawu. Nananu ya itang mag-five-six qng cantu? Feast for the day, all the year to the usurer.

Fashion is an everyday statement. In colleges and universities, the ubiquitous

Capampangan student is the one dressed to the nines but with barely a dime. Just about everywhere he is togged as though ever-ready to a party.

Dance is a religion. Even before the fad of disco and ballroom dancing, the Capampangan has had – dating to the turn of the century, the 19th to the 20th pa – Circulo Fernandino in the capital town, Bachelor’s Club, later Thomasian in Sto. Tomas, Old Legs in Bacolor, Batubalani in Guagua, Maharajah in Macabebe, Now and Then in Minalin, and a host of other annual formal dances where the local crème de la crème shine in their best fineries.

Porma is his way of life. When a Capampangan earns – even barely enough – the first thing he buys is a car, never a house. Why? Ninanu ca, malyari meng apidala-dalang pamorma ing bale?

Now you know the reason behind the labeling of the Capampangan as paratut, as mayabang. Part of this also is his “sugar mentality” raised, no doubt, in the province’s once fertile sugarlands. More than a sweet tooth and a diabetic constitution, the Capampangan possesses a saccharine tongue.

Just you listen when he woos the object of his affection. Or eavesdrop to his whispers to the subject of his seduction. And wonder no more why the Capampangan is a la(h)ing sibuburian, if not a la(h)ing pipicutan.

The Capampangan’s mastery with words is manifested too in the number of cabalens in literature and in the media. Just about every newspaper in Manila has had a Capampangan for an editor, columnist, deskman or reporter.

Of course, there are the laughables about the Capampangan.

When the deadly H-fever epidemic was wreaking havoc in Metro Manila and elsewhere, it was joked about that Pampanga would be spared. Why? The Capampangan has no H in his language, silly.

Which brings to mind that tongue-twister that landed me a grade of 70 in high-school Pilipino after I read it thus: Hako hay naiipan ng anging hamian hat hako’y napa-alak-ak, a-a-a-a-a.

Having not the letter H in the language is nothing to be ashamed of though. This is part of the Capampangan’s Spanish heritage. Remember in lengua Español, the letter H is silent. O, nanu pang asabi mu?

Positivizing the negative is a Kapampangan attribute. Finding opportunity in adversity is imbued in the Kapampangan character.

Yes, there was more than sloganeering or rhetorics in the late Governor Bren Z. Guiao’s E co magmalun, mibangun ya ing Pampanga or in then Acting Mayor Ed Pamintuan’s Agyu tamu! immediately after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. These were calls to the resiliency innate in the Capampangan.

Proven in time by the leaps and bounds the province has taken rising, then soaring from the Pinatubo’s ashes of devastation and despair.

There too was Governor Lito Lapid’s novel and noble meaning to the derogatory dugong aso long impacted in the Capampangan psyche.

This, when the uncolleged Lapid extolled it as the virtue of catapatan, of canine loyalty to an elder, to a superior, to a friend – before then President Fidel V. Ramos, credited for much of the salvation of Pampanga from obliteration and its subsequent rehabilitation and renewal.

Of course, there will be some debate on loyalty here, given the historical aberration of the Macabebes “betraying” Emilio Aguinaldo to the Americans in the second phase of the War of Philippine Independence. That, though, is another story.

For now, let us just be. Celebrate Capampangan pride. And passion too. Luid ya ing Capampangan.

ALAS, fixed on the social value, skin deep at that, I totally missed the spiritual – religious, if you may – side of the Capampangan. That the first Filipino priest, the first Filipino nun, the first Filipino Jesuit, the first Filipino Cardinal were all Capampangans bespeak of the breadth and depth of the Catholic faith in the Capampangan race.

Why, even the self-proclaimed “anointed son of god” Apollo Quiboloy – whatever god conceived him, or he conceived of – is, for better or for worse, a Capampangan. But his is another story. So, lest I be ordered to stop, I shall stop.

Kaohsiung chronicle

VIS-À-VIS the more popular capital of Taipei in the north, Kaohsiung in the south makes Taiwan’s no-less-significant other.

Aye, the more significant one. A quick jaunt to the Republic of China’s foremost Harbour City this weekend past – ease, comfort, and pleasure courtesy of Philippines AirAsia on flight, the Kaohsiung Tourism Bureau on land – more than enough to convince this one who’s had a surfeit of Taipei. Or, maybe it’s just the rose-colored glasses of first impressions.

Still, Kaohsiung impresses, and how!

A fixture in just about every Asian city, the night market is taken to an impossible high at Kaohsiung’s Ruifeng. Food, glorious food, in all its delectable varieties draw in an undulating tide of humanity through its aisles, nooks, and crannies. No other night market in all the Asian cities I’ve been to can compare to Ruifeng. Don’t believe me, come and feel it for yourself.

Temples and shrines, another Asian constant, don’t simply impress but impact their sacred presence around Lotus Pond – a lake, for its sheer breadth – that, to me, easily makes Kaohsiung’s most popular destination.

Confucius Temple, reputedly the largest of its kind in the whole of Taiwan, lies serenely at one corner of the pond. A tree-canopied path along the banks leads to a series of temples – the Pei Chi Pavilion lorded over by Daoist deity Xuan Wu, the Spring and Autumn Pavilion with the goddess of mercy Guanyin riding a dragon at its entrance, and the most interesting twin-towered Dragon and Tiger Pagodas where it is said to be good luck to enter through the first and exit through the second. Instant recall here of that Bruce Lee starrer deemed as one of the greatest martial arts films of all time.   

 

Across the road stands in subdued majesty Chi Ming Palace, arguably the most spectacular temple by Lotus Pond. Aye, why lotus? The sacred plant with its mystical flower abounds there, duh. 

Far from the pond but richer in spiritual ambiance is Fo Guang Shan Monastery, the largest Buddhist monastery in Taiwan and home too to one of the largest charity organizations in ROC. 

A welcoming hall – replete with restaurants and shops, a Starbucks too – opens up to an expansive square flanked on either side by eight Chinese pagodas – representing the Eightfold Path? – and statues of Buddha’s loved ones and foremost disciples leading to a memorial hall which houses several shrines, premier among them the Jade Buddha Shrines where enshrined reputedly tooth relics of Gautama Buddha. Om mani padme hum…

Atop the memorial hall is what is said to be the highest seated bronze Buddha in the world, looking benignly at all who comes hither.

A trip back in time to schooling in the olden days in China is Fongyi Academy of old red brick construction, complete with classrooms and a square where student and teachers are depicted in animated statues (dolls?), plus a small shrine, and a kiosk serving Taiwan’s wonderful milk tea. 

A short trip down history is provided by the Cihou Fort that once guarded the harbor topped by a lighthouse whence a panoramic view of the city unfolds.

Then, there’s the Dashu Old Railway Bridge, Asia’s longest at the time of its completion in 1913, now a hot spot for photography.       

Art’s sake

As in culture, Kaohsiung is a veritable art trove too. Nowhere is this most manifest than, most aptly, in the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts – an artwork in itself: its roof inspired by the flowing canopy of banyan trees in the area but at this time evoking a manta ray or even a space ship. Completed in 2018, the center houses an opera house, a concert hall, a playhouse, a recital hall and an outdoor theater seamlessly linking the building to a park.

Art alive, up and about! pervades Pier 2 – the row of old unused warehouses repurposed to art galleries, boutique shops, diners and bars, with Kaohsiung Warehouse 2 as flagship. Interactive exhibitions and records of its historic past are housed at the Hamasen Museum of Taiwan Railway, even as its top draw is

Hamasen Pier 2 line railway ride – on a mini-train! 

Kaohsiung’s penchant for repurposing disused things found expression too in the  Ten-Drum Ciaotou Creative Park. Once a sugar central – not unlike our Pasudeco in the City of San Fernando – the place is now a center of culture and the arts where performs a Grammy Award-winning drum and percussion band. A drumming workshop is offered to visitors before they are ushered in to a concert hall.    

One for the Guinness record or maybe Ripley’s is 1300 Only Porcelain – a fine-dining restaurant entirely interiored and decorated with porcelain down to its plates and platters, bowls, cups and glasses. Adjacent to it is a showroom of porcelain art with price tags running to millions in NT$.   

Art has permeated the hotel industry too. Cutesy, whimsy is Legend Hotel Liu-he with its explosion of colors in cartooned animal, ice cream, cakes and what-nots  straight from nursery books and Alice in Wonderland splashed all over, from its façade to the lobby, to the elevator, the restaurant, the corridors and the rooms themselves. It’s what sweet dreams of little girls and boys are made of. 

At luxurious E-Da Royal Hotel, the top draws are the themed-rooms – debutante, Jurassic, pirate. In some way extensions of the eponymous amusement park adjacent to the hotel.

 Amusement turns to exhilaration at the i-Ride Experience Center of Brogent Technologies. Strapped on a moving, tilting bench, feet dangling in mid-air one is taken on a bird’s eye tour of Kaohsiung via a panoramic spherical screen with special effects.

At the Suzuka Circuit Park, the adrenaline rush of speed and spin with karting, bump cars, spinning rides, and Ferris wheel and a trolley too. 

Long in adventure, steeped in culture and the arts, Kaohsiung is not, by any measure, wanting in romance too. 

Central to Kaohsiung, in geography as well as in sentimentality, is the Love River. A daytime cruise on board a solar-powered boat only stirred the imagination to a nighttime ride on gondolas, passed the twinkling lights on trees, the sound of music and the smell of coffee and wine of the cafes along the banks. With the one you love.

Aye, more than enough reason to come back.

 (AirAsia flies Clark-Kaohsiung every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday)

Unreading, unthinking

LAST AND lowest is the Philippines of 79 countries covered in a study on reading comprehension of the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment.

PISA is reputed to be a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that examines students’ knowledge in reading, mathematics, and science. On the other two, the Philippines is at rock bottom too.

In the PISA report, reading was the main subject assessed among 15-year old students where the Philippines posted an average reading score of 340 – a whopping 215 below China’s top-ranking 555 – and more than 100 points less than the OECD average of 487.
“Reading proficiency is essential for a wide variety of human activities - from following instructions in a manual; to finding out the who, what, when, where, and why of an event; to communicating with others for a specific purpose or transaction.” So reads the summary of the PISA 2018 results.

So, we weep.

We have not become simply a nation of non-readers, as surely as we have become a nation of talk-and-texters. And, not necessarily consequential to it, intellectually-challenged.

As much to the convenience of the electronic pad do we damn this retardation, as to the incapacitation of our educational system, long-ago deconstructing the very foundation of literacy, aye, of intellectual capacitation – the three Rs of Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic.

The first two essentially peas in one pod. As LitWord founder Pam Allyn perfectly puts it: “Reading is like breathing in, and writing is like breathing out.”  

And, as naturally, after the words, the numbers.

Related to the issue at hand is this we dug up from our Zona archives:

FOR ONE inured in classical studies – thanks to my formative years in the seminary – it is not at all effete snobbery to feel some disdain, at the same time some remorse, over the opportunities – to learn, to know, to be enriched – lost to a mind deprived of reading.

Aye, to character formation itself, where reading is elemental. As Francis Bacon monumentalized in his Of Studies:  

"Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And, therefore, if a man writes little, he had needed have a great memory; if he confers little, he had need of a ready wit; and if he read little, he had need of much cunning to seem to know that he knoweth not"

For one in the writing profession, reading is a requirement: even a sine qua non, as a matter of course. Reading for a writer covers not only newspapers, magazines and periodicals, but moreso, books – of all kinds, in all subjects. If only to broaden his horizon, if only to expand his mind, if only to increase his vocabulary.

Again, Bacon: “Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”

Yes, light reading – novels, literary anthologies – for the senses; high-brow reading – philosophies, histories, sciences – for the intellect.

Aye, in this age of Kindle, Nook eReader, Cybook and Pepper Pad, I still go for the old hard- and soft-covers. There’s nothing more intellectually stimulating to me than the smell of pulp only a book has. It makes understanding of what I am reading deeper, retention in memory more permanent, the imagination more expansive.  

E-books or good old books-in-ink-and-paper though, reading is on sheer joy. There is life in books. There is life to books. Inhering in human life itself.  

Read John Milton in Areopagitica: “Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.

Unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.

A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”

Read. It is food for the intellect, nutrient for the soul. 

AYE, the ‘tards so predominant in this generation are an indubitable affirmation of the PISA Report, and undeniable manifestation of the malnutrition of the Filipino intellect, if not the undernourishment of his very soul.

  

Ending AIDS, simply

ENDING THE AIDS epidemic by 2030, as we committed to in the Sustainable Development Goals, will require a continuous collaborative effort. The United Nations, Governments, civil society and other partners have been working together to scale up access to health services and to halt new HIV infections. More than 23 million people living with HIV were receiving treatment in 2018.

Communities around the world are at the heart of this response―helping people to claim their rights, promoting access to stigma-free health and social services, ensuring that services reach the most vulnerable and marginalized, and pressing to change laws that discriminate.  As the theme of this year’s observance rightly highlights, communities make the difference.

Yet unmet needs remain. A record 38 million people are living with HIV, and resources for the response to the epidemic declined by $1 billion last year. More than ever we need to harness the role of community-led organizations that advocate for their peers, deliver HIV services, defend human rights and provide support.

Where communities are engaged, we see change happen. We see investment lead to results. And we see equality, respect and dignity.

With communities, we can end AIDS.

SO GOES the message of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for World AIDS Day 2019 observed Dec. 1, hewing on the theme Ending the HIV/AIDS Epidemic: Community by Community.

Well, what do you know Sec-Gen, Angeles City has predated your call by five years. Indubitable proof of such prescience of the city government is this piece that appeared here in May 2014.

Angeles City’s aim: Zero HIV detection

So screamed the May 21 banner story of Headline Gitnang Luzon.

Zero HIV detection?

In utter disbelief, as I was? Read on:

“The city government, in joining the world in lighting candles to remember AIDS victims, is aiming for a zero HIV detection through the initiative of the communities.” So, the lead paragraph qualifies.

Zero HIV detection. It’s really there. So, believe. As I did. And some other readers I chanced upon over coffee and doughnuts at Krispy Kreme, SM City Clark.

And on the bases of the headline and the lead, I readily assumed – and they agreed: The collective intelligence obtaining at the Angeles City hall is equal to that of a gnat’s.

I repeat, boldly now: The collective intelligence obtaining at the Angeles City hall is equal to that of a gnat’s.

Angeles City could not have aimed any lower than zero HIV detection in its campaign against the dreaded affliction. That is not only the lowest but even the basest level the LGU could ever aim for.

(Mabalacat City’s double visionary Deng Pangilinan instantly rued the inapplicability here of his oft-quoted classic “Checkpoint English” attributed to the car dealers of yore, Norio and Marsing: “How much the lowest can you make it down?”)

Aim high. Olongapo City Mayor Richard J. Gordon once mobilized his constituency to make their city the cleanest in the whole country. So’ the Memo Plus Gold-supplemented Ashley Manabat remembered.

Aim lowest. The Angeles City government is now virtually directing its anti-HIV-AIDS battles. Riposted someone who looked like Sun-Star Pampanga’s Rey Navales.

While it may take a community initiative to light candles in some commemorative ceremonies – as indeed it took Angeles City, according to the story – it does not take that much number of people to achieve zero HIV detection.

Yeah, as in the case of evil readily triumphing when good people do nothing, all it takes for the city government to accomplish that zero-sum aim is to close its eyes to any and all cases of HIV in the city, past, present and to come. Zero detection of HIV. Zero case of HIV. Zero case of AIDS. Ergo: totally safe sex at Fields Avenue, the very ground zero of HIV-AIDS in the city, moreso, in the rest of it. Simple as that.

Yeah, in one fell swoop – okay, with one banner headline – Angeles City appears to have found the final solution to its HIV-AIDS problem there. 

I can’t quite get it but I see some parallelism there with that epic fail of a reporter who once uploaded his photo on Facebook, looking like he has had no sleep for a week, captioning it: “So hard to hide tired eyes.”

To which I commented, rather wryly: “Close them, dummy.”        

Aiming for zero HIV detection makes the Angeles City government the proverbial ostrich burying its head in the sand, which unwittingly exposes its behind, thereby the temptation to kick it. As we may well be doing now.

Aiming for zero HIV detection makes the Angeles City government two of the three proverbial monkeys – the one seeing no evil and the one hearing no evil – thoroughly insensitive, if not clueless, to what goes around them. But we choose not to assume the monkeyness to speak no evil. So, you’re reading this now, though evil it may come to those it may be inflicted upon.

By aiming for zero HIV detection, the Angeles City government can be accused of shirking its responsibility to protect and preserve the health, and uplift the welfare of its people. Thus, negating the LGU’s very reason for being.

Thus, making a mockery of all those best practices, seal of good housekeeping, sound fiscal management and good governance awards and recognitions so far reaped by the city. 

And a falsity of Mayor Ed Pamintuan’s 8^th-place finish in the World Mayor Prize.

Herstory of the Pampanga press

A DAY after the celebration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the Pampanga Press Club elected its first woman president.

Sheer ahistorical coincidence that such had to happen too on the 70^th anniversary of Central Luzon’s unarguably oldest, concededly grandest, organization of working media persons. That is older than the 1952-founded National Press Club – if we may indulge in some unjournalistic conceit.

That it took seven decades before a woman became the face – brain and heart too – of the PPC conjures a chauvinistic all-boys club, or worse, a cabal of misogynists. Pure conjecture that, I assure you.

The fact is that throughout PPC’s history, of the club’s distaff members it was only the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Tonette Orejas that dared to run for its presidency.  

While it looked like an association exclusive to men, verily a fraternity in its early years, there were already a number of women members of the club by the 1980s, mainly staff writers of the Department of Public Information-Region 3 who also dabbled in column writing for the local publications The Voice, Pampanga Newsweek, Town Crier, and Pampanga Times.

There was Riza Angara-Moises who later also published her own newsmagazine Issues. Riza has since become the proprietor of the giant bus company Genesis Transport. Other women journos – called “newshen” then to differentiate them from the newsmen, no sexism here – were Gigi Llames, Erlie Tuazon, and Bunny David.

As formidable in the printed page as their male peers, alas, not one of them ever rose in the club roster above the position of secretary or treasurer. Not that that was warranted or mandated but that was…well, the way it was.   

Truly, it is some ironic twist of fate that the first ever club of media persons hereabouts rather came late in the elevation of women to its apex.

The Angeles City Press and Radio Club (ACPRC), founded in the 1960s and since evolved to the Metro Angeles City Journalists Association Inc. had for some time Hannah Bauzon-Tulud, publisher of the Central Luzon Times, as president.

It was the now departed Hannah that also founded and acted as first and only president of the Angeles City Tri-Media Association.

If ageing memory still serves right, the ACPRC had a woman president even earlier than Hannah in broadcaster Jenny Canlas of the now defunct dzYA.

In the immediate post-EDSA Revolution, there was the Pampanga PC-INP Press Corps with Thet Tan of People’s Journal as president, propped up by the Visayan troika of tabloid correspondents Jess Malabanan, Rudy Abular, and the now departed George Hubierna.   

So, it finally came to pass for the PPC after a lifetime of seven decades. Long years in coming, Tonette’s election to the club presidency brings to mind that 1970s Virginia Slims cigarette ad blurb: You’ve come a long way, Baby. Originally a strong feminist statement, aye, a voice of woman empowerment. Never mind its being perverted as some sexist denigration later.    

Tonette’s ascendance is beyond any denigration though, not even but a whiff of it.

In the 70 years of the PPC, no other president – this conceited one who served in 1990 not excluded – came to the position bringing as much acclaimed body of work, as much recognition for journalistic excellence – the Catholic Mass Media Awards, Most Outstanding Kapampangan Award, The Outstanding Fernandino Award, etcetera, etcetera – as Tonette.

Indeed, it cannot be mere coincidence but destiny that on the PPC’s septuagennial anniversary, aye, at its platinum jubilee, one lustrous jewel of journalism makes its crowning glory.  

Mayap a oras Tonette. Luid ya ing PPC.